Down to Earth Extra November 2025

The November 2025 edition of Down to Earth Extra has been published. You can download it HERE or you can read it below.

Jurassic Lives Uncovered

A little while ago I was complaining about a lack of local geological stories. Then two come along at once! You have probably read all about them yourselves but just in case, here is what I have found out.

First of all - Xiphodracon goldencapensis - is an 185 million year old icthyosaur found in 2001 in the cliffs between Charmouth and Seatown. I read about it first in a BBC ARTICLE and, later, tracked down the ACADEMIC PAPER which describes the beastie in great detail. The lead author of this paper, Dean Lomax, is based at Bristol and Manchester Universities.

The holotype and only known specimen of the hauffiopterygian leptonectid, Xiphodracon goldencapensis (ROM VP52596) from Golden Cap, between Charmouth and Seatown, Dorset, UK. The skeleton is exposed in ventrolateral view. The skull has been fully prepared free of matrix whereas most of the skeleton is still in matrix. The left (upper) forefin has been prepared so that it is three-dimensionally preserved and projects upwards. Scale bar represents 20 cm.

The animal has been identified as a new species and dated as being from the early Pliensbachian. This is a time from which few icthyosaur fossils have been collected and this makes the find of some importance.

And secondly - a dinosaur trackway found. The BBC has produced a YOUTUBE VIDEO about the discovery of a very long sauropod trackway in an Oxfordshire limestone quarry. One suspects that a documentary is on its way.

The trackway is over 220m long and is thought to have been made 166 million years ago. The dinosaurs were land animals but they were walking in shallow sea water - there are marine fossils next to the footprints. 

Anne Bronte's Rocks

 Anne Bronte's Rocks

A correspondent, in reply to my remark that it was becoming difficult to find things suitable for this blog, sent me THIS LINK to the journal "Bronte Studies". This journal does not usually find its way to the top of my reading list but it takes us back to a time when being educated meant being interested in everything!

If you go to the Bronte Parsonage Museum you will see Anne Bronte's collection of stones.

 Anne Bronte’s collection of stones, as displayed at the Bronte Parsonage Museum. Courtesy of the Bronte Society.

The collection has been studied and found to be largely carnelians - a form of the silica mineral chalcedony. There is also a piece of flowstone and a couple of agates. The stones could not all have come from one site and they seem to have been deliberately chosen.

The article suggests that Scarborough is the most likely place where Anne collected her rocks. Her work as a governess took her to the place. She may have collected them herself or purchased them from a lapidary, of which there were several within the town. Some of the carnelians are of high quality and suggest that Anne knew what she was doing while making her collection. She certainly valued her collection enough to take it back to Haworth.

(You have probably noticed the plethora of links in this post. This is a new feature of Blogger, the app which I use to write this blog. I suspect that I will turn it off in future posts.)